Long term effects of "bad" teachers?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

It’s a totally different world today; very few of the teachers I had would survive the system we currently have. They were pretty open in what they thought and what they felt and their actions were there for anyone to see. Today I’m guessing that teachers are basically just as opinionated but much better at keeping it hidden.

The real difference seems to be in who is in charge in the classrooms. When I was a student, the teacher was clearly in charge. No matter how bad they were in most respects, as long as we came out of it having learned the material, all seemed forgiven. Now the kids and parents run the classroom and the emphasis of the teachers seems more on not making waves. Once you pop up on the radar screen and have the wrong parent or kid against you, you are going to be gone and no union or board is going to save you.

Which is better; the old days or today? No kids and I left teaching in 83 so I don’t have a dog in the fight and I don’t care all that much. But as bad as a lot of my teachers were and in spite of the terrible things they sometimes did and said, I did learn. Probably more and in more depth than similar students today.

22

Stories like this fascinate me, because they often elide the specifics that most interest me.

What form did the bluster take? “I won’t re-score this test, Mr. Shodan, because _________.”

Did she claim the answers were wrong? What possible justification does the teacher in that story use?

23

I had a second grade who screwed up royally teaching math. Like she couldn’t do simple arithmetic herself. Starting there I had trouble with math all through elementary, high school, and university. I believed I was somehow deficient in math and just accepted it.

However, I recently got a master’s degree and had to do some math work. I was amazed that all these years later I was able to learn math quite well with good teaching and youtube videos.

24

As I recall, one of her arguments was that since the test was scored on a curve, it didn’t matter since all the students took the same test. So the score on the test accurately reflected my daughter’s standing in the class. And to be fair, not all my daughter’s answers were correct - some were clearly wrong, and others partially wrong or incomplete.

To clarify, the teacher agreed to re-score the first test. Her reluctance to re-score the second was what led me to contact the administration. The teacher did not (IMO) have, or give, good reasons for her refusal to re-score.

And as I mentioned, there were several other parents who had encountered the same issue. So it is understandable that the teacher felt defensive, and decided to dig in her heels.

It was a private school, and I was trying, perhaps not very successfully, to strike a balance between being sure my daughter’s work was being correctly evaluated, and being an over-protective stage mother type reacting with horror to the idea of my precious angel being corrected, or her perfect 4.0 GPA being threatened.

Regards,
Shodan

25

My mother, who came from a wealthy family and was an only child adored her high school. So much so that she made my father move into that school district when we came of high school age.

We were poor, none of the family wealth had trickled down for various reasons. And there were 6 kids. We bought a house at very furthermost corner of the school district, just inside enough to qualify for that school.

Where we were the poor outsiders every day of our lives and especially by a majority of the teachers. Think it doesn’t happen? The teachers knew who had their own shiny new car in the parking lot, who had the matching designer clothing and bags, who had the magical last name, who lived in on of the exclusive conclaves of the rich in the suburb. And we simply couldn’t catch a break, we outsiders.

I won home room president in senior year, despite my home room teacher’s very best efforts to make a strong case to the rest of the class that my opponent, who had the car, clothes, right address and a VERY magical important last name, should win. A very obvious effort.

Yeah, it had an effect. Can you tell?

26

One positive that came about is I will not have my kid go through what I went through. I very much let the teachers be in charge when my kid’s at school, but if there ever is a line that is crossed, or even toed, I will go Mama Bear so fast.

27

I did well in grade school, even in math, but high school was horrid. There was the math teacher who put all the boys in the front desks and the girls in the back. She taught only the boys. I still freeze when looking at numbers. Another teacher would fly into fits of rage on a regular basis. She grabbed one boy by the collar and shook him until his neck bled. Another had his head knocked into the blackboard. One girl was made to stand at her desk, until she broke into tears, because she didn’t know the answer to a question. I aced that class; fear is a great motivator at times but I still panic when asked even the simplest question. There was another who was just plain mean. And the principal was a bully. Anybody wonder why I’m practically a recluse?

28

I am curious, did you also have bad experiences in college?

29

My “bad” teachers in college were few and far between*, and bad based on their administrative or procedural issues (vague test questions, correct items marked wrong, that sort of thing), not the bullying that sometimes happens in elementary and high school teachers.

Other students? Not a problem. I had matured by then and knew how to handle or ignore nonsense…plus there just seemed to be a lot less of it.

*One oft’ unspoken benefit of going to community college in a city with many top tier universities is that your teachers are often professors at excellent schools also. My adjunct prof for Chemistry taught mostly at University of Chicago, my Psychology of Religions was from DePaul, my Biochem taught at Northwestern… I got a smorgasbord of awesome teachers at rock bottom discount pricing. :wink:

30

  1. TEACHERS AIN’T ALWAYS RIGHT. Had a teacher in primary school who was convinced that history had pretty much ended in 1946, except for Presidential elections. This was how I learned that being right is no defense whatsoever for contradicting one’s elders.

  2. OCCASIONALLY, TEACHERS GO CRAZY. Had a third grade teacher who used to routinely tell us how much she hated us. She never DID anything about it, aside from detailing how rotten we all were. This was my first glimpse at how incipient insanity worked; she suddenly disappeared one day and was replaced by a sub.

  3. LOTS OF THEM DON’T LIKE KIDS. I got a few of these. Some were better teachers than others, but I used to wonder about the ones who couldn’t seem to get a grip on how kids think and learn and go at it from THAT direction, instead of yammering like a college professor.

  4. LOTS OF THEM ARE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY. That is to say, a living; NO one goes into education thinking to get rich, except the guys who make those standardized tests. And I can think of a few teachers who did not TEACH, per se, so much as go through the motions; a math teacher, in particular, who never once graded any of our assignments, springs to mind; we got grades basically based on our behavior in class. Tested once to see – turned it a homework assignment where all the answers were deliberately wrong. Got an 88.

  5. THEY FOLLOW THE FAST FOOD RULE LIKE EVERYONE ELSE. The Fast Food rule is learned by anyone who’s ever worked a counter where you had to deal with a buttload of customers: 99 of them can be perfectly ordinary reasonable people who buy their pop and burger and move along… but you’ll remember the one who wanted to know why you didn’t serve beer, gluten free buns, and meatless beef and was going to take it out on YOU, by Ghod!

Teachers are much the same way. I can think back on a great many of them who were brilliant, wonderful, nurturing, inspiring people. But the quickest one to jump to mind is that bastard in PE who just had us run laps all the time…

31

Can I hijack the thread with an even more extreme story about shared school experiences? Well, I’m gonna anyway…

It’s a nun’s school, one of the first opened by the Company of Mary; in place for several hundred years. We got a new principal when we were in 8th grade, and the new principal decided to reject “color days”, certain days when we traditionally did not have to wear the uniform on account of being half-days when many families were going to leave town or receive visitors. She made this decree public after school hours on the day before a color day; several of us never heard of it and got punished for being out of uniform.

OK, it was true that said days were not mentioned in the school’s regulations, but the local legal system considers that tradition takes precedence over written law “both in time and in authority”: that is, if the written law and what’s actually done don’t match, you correct the papers.

In the first PTA meeting after the “cancelled” color day, there weren’t just parents but grandmothers, and one of the mother/grandmother sets was carrying a notarized letter from the bedridden great-grandmother, indicating that not only did they have color days when she was a student at that school, but she figured they also did in her mother’s time, as said mother considered them perfectly normal “and was one of those people who will complain about the Catechism being too modern”.

The written rule got changed toot suit and the principal had to apologize to the students, specially to those of us who had been punished, both in public and in writing.

32

That sounds like a positive learning experience.

Now you know that if enough parents go after an issue, things will change.

33

My experiences, no. My son’s, hell yes. My son is autistic and ADHD. No, he can’t just “stop doing that”, which is what more than one teacher starting in first grade have suggested. Can’t he just sit still? Can he not get frustrated when the room is loud? Can he not take things literally? Yeah, no, he can’t.

We started grade school believing that teachers and schools had our son’s best interests in mind. They don’t. And what you don’t know about your rights as a parent will hurt your child. Well, if you are someone like me anyway, with a disabled child. So now, 3 years later, I have an attorney, because, as much as We wanted the school and the district to do the right thing, turns out they won’t.

My advice, to everyone, whether or not you have a disabled child, is always be your child’s advocate at school. You don’t get a do over. Don’t be a helicopter parent. Your kid gets to make mistakes and learn from them. But don’t let the system walk on your children either.

34

Did you go to a community college or university? Some of my friends who went to community college told me it was just like high school, did you find that to be the case?

35

I went to community college. No, I didn’t find it very much like high school. Far less socializing and petty drama and more focus on school work. But your use of “university” suggests to me that you may not be from the US, much less my part of it, so your local community colleges may be different.

36

So basically, she was fucking lazy (or possibly genuinely struggling to find time to do her job while taking care of a sick relative.)

37

The one that comes to mind is my 6th grade reading teacher.

“Reading” was a subject, independent of “English” (different teacher, different grade on your report card); “English” was about grammar and parts of speech as well as short bits of literature to analyze, whereas “Reading” was… well, they handed out these Scott Foresman “readers” and the teacher plowed through them consecutively. Classroom time was spent reading the assigned reading and then we took tests on them that seemed mostly geared to prove you didn’t slack off and really did read (and comprehend) the material, not much question on your own thoughts or what you thought the author was getting at or whatever…

a) By the third month of the year I’d read the whole thing, of course, because the allotted time was way more than the time it took to actually read the assigned reading, and I loved to read so I skipped ahead at random. You would have too, right? So around November I was bringing Nancy Drew or John Carter of Mars or other books from home and would be reading them in class. “What are you reading! What’s this? No outside reading in my class!”, she proclaimed, and snatched up my book, (losing my place in it), and taking it to her desk. When I protested she said I could have it back after class.

b) Nasty mean-spirited disciplinarian. No talking. No sitting with your ankles crossed, no slouching, no elbows on the desk, no fiddling with your hair, no writing, no whispering or passing notes or otherwise communicating with the other kids in class, no looking out the window. Any violations would get your name called out and you’d get berated contemptuously, belittled in front of the class for misbehavior like a bad puppy caught chewing on slippers or peeing on the carpet.

Put a and b together. I’d read the entire goddam book. So for the rest of the year I was expected to sit motionless and re-read short storied I’d already read, many of them multiple times already. Complete and utter waste of time and I knew it and complained about it. No distinction was made between voicing a complaint about the teaching style or classroom structure versus mouthing obscenities to the teacher, it was “talking back” as far as she was concerned.

Cemented my belief in children’s rights and children’s liberation, that’s for sure. I circulated a petition during recess, intending to bring it to the principal, but other kids, although they agreed with me, were afraid they’d get in trouble if they signed. Tried Route B, got my parents involved. Didn’t have much impact although she was allegedly asked to give me new reading assignments if I wasn’t allowed to read my own book in class.

For 7th grade we were to have tiers, with 6th grade teachers recommending us for Level IV (excellent, beyond the grade level) down to Level I (remedial, not up to minimum standards for the grade level). This %#@! gargoyle-faced martinet set me up for Level III. My parents again protested on my behalf and she huffed, “I haven’t seen anything in your son’s comportment to think he could handle Level IV coursework”. They had me tested by independent testing that put me at freshman college level reading comp and vocab and the school overruled her.

38

A story a bit like Shodan’s but from the students side. I was in Year 9, I don’t know how it is in the US but at that stage of high school our science classes were divided by term/subject – so term 1 was chemistry, term 2 - Biology, term 3 – Astronomy etc until year 11 and 12 when you could specialise in one field and take year-long subjects.

This particular term we were doing geology which had a section on fossils and palaeontology. In the end of term exam almost the entire class got several questions on fossils marked wrong. Even when we complained and went to the text book to back us up the teacher refused to budge on his interpretation of the answers. The drop in score was enough to change final marks for the term.

I ended up showing the exam to my father who was a geologist and he agreed that we were right and the teacher was wrong. He arranged a meeting and the teacher still refused to change the marks. After that dad took the exam to his workplace and got two palaeontologists that worked there to check our answers and sign a letter supporting our answers. That eventually went to the principal who ordered the test be remarked by a different teacher and the new scores entered into the record.

I don’t know why the teacher was so stubborn in his views, dad seemed to think it was partly that once he had said we were wrong that changing his mind would ‘look bad’ in front of the students. He was gone the next year when classes started again.

39

If I think of all the teachers I had through elementary school, middle school, and high school, well, there had to be about a hundred different teachers. The mass of them fell along the normal bell curve of nature. A vast majority fell in the middle, with no harm done, and some good done, since they did their jobs. But the few at the lower end of the scale caused me to hate reading, while the few at the higher end of the scale gave me encouragement to try new things, despite the possibility of failure. The former has been detrimental to my life enjoyment, for obvious reasons, while the latter helped form me into the adult human being I am today - in all aspects.

40

One group of teachers as a whole that just occurred to me - PE (physical Ed./Gym whatever you call them).

Every single one I encountered was a intolerant, vindictive asshole. If you weren’t good at sport or were trying but unfit or overweight - rather than encouragement, motivation or help they always resorted to insults, shaming and ridicule.

After years of that I learned to hate and despise all forms of team sport and a lot of physical activity which has had a huge, long term effect.